1 week ago
7
Not much more than a decade after House of Cards transformed streaming, it is true to say streaming has transformed television. House of Cards also transformed actress Robin Wright, an actress largely seen in romantic comedy and fantasy, into an actress who breathed life into complex, sometimes terrifying women.
“We knew that this was going to become the future, streaming, which is why [House of Cards director] David Fincher said, ‘You’ll probably benefit from doing the show because we’re going to launch this medium that will take off’ – and it did,” Wright says.
Robin Wright as Laura Sanderson in The Girlfriend, which Wright also directed.Credit:
The 59-year-old Texas-born actress has returned to streaming, this time for The Girlfriend, which she produced and directed and also stars in. Not as the girlfriend Cherry (who’s played by Olivia Cooke), who falls in love with Daniel (Laurie Davidson), but rather as Laura, Daniel’s mother, whose omnipresence in her son’s life seems to become something sinister when “the girlfriend” enters the picture.
Loading
“I always want to direct – whether it was a series or a movie, it could have been either – but because it was a series, that gave me an opportunity to develop the style, the tone, cast it, pick my director of photography,” Wright says of what drew her to the project.
“I wanted it to look like a film, and it does. It’s shot more filmic than network television. I really wanted to start at the inception and develop this piece. The flip side of being a director is that when I’m in the scene with the actors and I’m directing the scene, I’m doing two things: I’m watching their performance and I’m having to direct myself. It’s a little bit tricky because sometimes I’m like, ‘Cut, cut’.”
Based on the Michelle Frances novel of the same name, all six episodes of The Girlfriend are directed by Wright. What begins as an uneasy relationship between mother and prospective daughter-in-law spins out of control into something darker and more dangerously complex. Laura Sanderson is not Claire Underwood, but both women share a rich and fascinating complexity.
For many years, Wright says, she saw actors not really understand notes they were given. “You’re like, ‘Give me something. Give me a story. Give me some backdrop of a feeling that makes me feel happy when I walk through the door.’ I wanted to give that to actors because I wanted that. A lot of times I didn’t receive it.
Olivia Cooke plays Cherry in The Girlfriend. Credit:
“On The Girlfriend I was too busy watching Olivia Cooke, going, ‘Oh my god, she’s so good, oh shit, I’m on camera’,” Wright says, laughing. “You have to catch yourself and you have to look at each actor differently. You have to watch if you’ve pushed too far, if you’ve talked too much, or if you’ve given them too much of a story, they get heady.”
Loading
Though she has a large body of work, Wright remains associated with a handful of roles, notably Buttercup in The Princess Bride, and Jenny Curran in Forrest Gump. (For diehard soap opera fans, the role of Kelly Capwell in Santa Barbara is also an enduring favourite.)
Our cultural relationship with those two performances has also inadvertently been reshaped by streaming. Available on demand, they achieve a kind of artistic immortality, in the distant past for one segment of the audience but discovered for the first time by another.
“The Princess Bride is an iconic piece of work and it’s a classic; we made it in 1986 and it’s still holding strong as an original piece of content,” Wright says. “But so could House of Cards [and] The Sopranos. I feel like there are certain stamps that will be embedded in our content brain of going, ‘That was a great show’, like Six Feet Under. These kinds of things will continue to be iconic pieces of work.”
Robin Wright and Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump.Credit: Getty Images
But despite that immortality, Wright is quick to quash any suggestion of a Princess Bride remake, sequel or prequel, no matter how often the rumour seems to get traction in the press.
Loading
“They called [Princess Bride co-star] Cary Elwes and I until we just laughed hysterically,” Wright says, referring to one recent offer, a sequel with the original cast reprising their roles. “We’re like, are you kidding? We’re going to look like geriatric-ward characters in the movie now. We just said no, don’t do that. Don’t ruin it.
“Princess Bride and Forrest Gump are these classic pieces. You feel so proud to have been a part of that. It’s almost like – it’s like a tenet of a foundation that will remain, and you’re like, I got to be a part of that. How great.”
Wright was this year’s recipient of the Crystal Nymph at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival, one of the most prestigious awards in the television business, acknowledging a sustained body of high-quality work.
She is not naturally reflective, she says, but notes that “it always comes back to Princess Bride and Forrest Gump. Every single junket, every single event.” More than House of Cards? “For sure.”
Which is a shame, in a way. In the fullness of time, Claire Underwood will be remembered alongside Lady Macbeth. “When the character was being developed,” she says, “David [Fincher] said, ‘Pick an animal. Who do you think Claire is?’ And I said, ‘She’s a bust, she’s a marble.’ So everything is very still and focused and laser-sharp, and she shouldn’t speak very much. When she speaks, it should be only what needs to be spoken.”
Cary Elwes and Robin Wright in The Princess Bride.Credit:
The topic of Kevin Spacey, who was accused of sexual misconduct and sacked from House of Cards in 2017, forcing the series to be restructured without him, is not technically off limits but Wright declines to discuss it.
Loading
What she does say is that when it erupted, “we had to collectively decide: do we want to continue the show? I said we should, for the fans. It’s not fair to them. It was already kind of written that Claire and Frank were separated at that time in the show. I just said, ‘Let’s continue, and we will write accordingly, and she will become the commander-in-chief’.”
As for House of Cards, the show that built a streaming empire sits uniquely in history. Despite the wonderland of streaming, Wright notes, nobody got paid royalties, an issue that ultimately came to a head when the writers’ and actors’ unions brought Hollywood to a shuddering halt in 2023, in search of a better deal.
A deal was struck, but not retroactively. Which means Wright no longer gets paid for House of Cards. “Nope,” she says. “Nobody gets royalties from the streaming.”
To add insult to injury, she doesn’t even get a free subscription to Netflix. “No. How about that? I pay for Netflix every month.”
Hollywood. It’s not for the faint-hearted.
The Girlfriend is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.
